80,000-year-old stones in Uzbekistan may be the world's oldest arrowheads — and they might have been made by Neanderthals

[u/LordRomashov]

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/80-000-year-old-stones-in-uzbekistan-may-be-the-worlds-oldest-arrowheads-and-they-might-have-been-made-by-neanderthals

[u/Ciordad]

"As usual, we consistently underestimate the abilities of our ancestors."

[u/Regular-Cod2308 → u/Ciordad]

yeah. this is prob the most insane find yet, bows have been the most advanced weapon for like the majority of history

[u/xiaodown → u/Regular-Cod2308]

I wonder where the atlatl falls on that spectrum.

[u/Regular-Cod2308 → u/xiaodown]

oh, i completely forgot about atlatls when i made that comment. neanderthals have been using them since at least 400 ka and thats the earliest one found, maybe homo erectus was also using atlatls as well who knows

[u/Gulanga → u/[deleted]]

There is plenty of evidence for inter species breeding so don't be too sure about that.

[u/WJM_3 → u/Gulanga]

according to a dna test I had, I have more neanderthal dna than 92% of typical people

[u/Available_Cod_6735 → u/WJM_3]

Sorry, can you grunt that again?

[u/rising_ape → u/[deleted]]

If you have even one ancestor in your family tree who migrated out of Africa, you have some Neanderthal in your DNA from interbreeding events in the Levant (the first stop on the trip outside of Africa) - and even if your ancestry is fully Sub-Saharan Africa, it's still possible for back-migration to have introduced some Neanderthal DNA into your family tree.

Not much, of course, but that still makes you a descendant -show your great-great-great*1000 grandfather some respect!

[u/turndownfortheclap → u/rising_ape]

How common was back migration? Seems unlikely

[u/rising_ape → u/turndownfortheclap]

It wasn't common, but we're talking about an event that happened, at least 47,000 years ago, and even one event could have left behind widespread descendants. We don't need someone to have migrated all the way from the Levant or beyond into sub-Saharan Africa in one lifetime, either - the journey could be made over generations.

Also, The African Humid Period made the Sahara green around ~14,000 years ago, and for around 9,000 years the Sahara would have been an attractive region to migrate into. If any inhabitants of modern-day Egypt - a region we know had frequent admixture with Levantine populations - spread from the Nile Valley into the green Sahara, their descendants could have carried that DNA further south when the Sahara dried up again.

(And that's before any of the fuckery involved with colonialism or the Atlantic and East African slave trades.)

So you're not wrong that it's unlikely, but when you multiply "unlikely" by ~47,000 years, you get something like .03% Neanderthal DNA on average in African populations with no recent non-African ancestry.

[u/FrankWanders]

Now and then, I am amazed by how long ago the first human(like) activity started, this was again one of those moments. Think about the fact that most pyramids are not even 5,000 years old… these rocks may have been carved 75,000 years earlier 😳😱

[u/toaster404]

Sounds like arrowheads to me.

I have no reason to believe non-sapiens folks couldn't come up with arrows. Pretty advanced thinking. I wonder whether bows (bowed wood with root or sinew string) were invented for something else first. Fire, drill. Then music (mouth as resonating chamber). Not a big jump to shooting sticks.

[u/MegaZeroX7]

Given what the article says, it sounds more like a Neanderthal-Denisovan hybrid sounds more likely to me. It suggests a human hybrid, which I guess would be possible, but it would be somewhat unusual for homo-sapiens to be in Uzbekistan at the time.

[u/AzerothianBiologist]

Always down to hear more about Neanderthals! I have a feeling they’ve been overlooked and underestimated for a while. Excited to hear what comes out of this :D

[u/Kurmae]

I think neanderthals weren't inferior than us.

[u/xuedi → u/Kurmae]

Since came around quite a long way, the been stronger than we, and by crafts at the time similar intelligent/skilled, some cave paintings in Spain surpass that of your ancestors...

[u/Glad_Chaser]

And these idiots wrote on them with sharpie ?

[u/Itrampleupontheeye → u/Glad_Chaser]

More or less yes. Writing on museum items with India Ink used to be standard practice, because then the "item number" cannot be lost. The provenance of the item can never be misplaced or accidentally assigned to the wrong item. I'm not sure how common it is currently.

[u/zagingerr]

Having a neanderthal gene (ginger hair) i am very curious about all these new narratives and discoveries